Govard Bidloo and Gerard Laireese : “Fetal Skeleton (Table 101)” (1685)

Anatomia humani corporis was a landmark anatomical atlas published in 1685 by the Dutch anatomist Govard Bidloo. Among its innovations were microscopic descriptions of human hair and skin, including the papillary ridges on the fingertips, which became the basis for modern forensic fingerprinting. It is widely recognized for the artistic sophistication of its 107 plates, designed by Gerard de Lairesse.

According to Christie’s, Lairesse’s designs represented “a total departure from the idealistic tradition inaugurated by Vesalian woodcuts.” He “displayed his figures with everyday realism and sensuality, contrasting the raw dissected parts of the body with the full, soft surfaces of undissected flesh surrounding them; placing flayed, bound figures in ordinary nightclothes or bedding; setting objects such as a book, a jar, a crawling fly in the same space as a dissected limb or torso. He thus brought the qualities of Dutch still-life painting into anatomical illustration, and gave a new, darker expression to the significance of dissection.”

The large and expensive atlas having not achieved great commercial success, Bidloo’s publisher sold 300 copies — or perhaps the original plates themselves — to the English anatomist William Cowper, who plagiarized them for his own work, The anatomy of humane bodies (1698). A vitriolic public exchange ensued, with numerous pamphlets published in each anatomist’s defense.

Credit Line: Image by the Wellcome Library, London (CC BY 4.0).